Re: [PATCH 6/7] Add an optional limit to git-formatpatch

Yann Dirson <ydirson@altern.org> writes:

I am unsure about this one for a few reasons.

 - If you have:

           topic~3--topic~2--topic~1--topic
          /      
	MB--*--*--*--upstream

   and you do "not want to format all patches since the merge
   base", instead of "format-patch --limit=topic~2 master topic",
   you could just say "format-patch topic~2 topic", so this
   feature seems unnecessary.  Maybe I am not reading you right.

 - Even if the idea of having limit makes sense, only one limit
   can be specified, but you can have multiple (upstream,mine)
   pairs.  Your --limit applies the single limit to all of them.
   I am not sure if that makes sense either.

   I'd expect the limit value to be per (upstream,mine) pair,
   making "# Now we have what we want in $@" for-loop to iterate
   over (upstream,mine,limit) 3-tuples.

   Internally an (upsteam,mine) pair is canonicalized to be a
   single string "upstream..mine", so extending the canonical
   syntax somehow, say, "upstream..mine..limit" where empty
   "limit" means "use the merge base", might make sense.  I
   dunno.

 - One thing that comes to mind is to deal with this structure:

         topic~5--topic~4--topic~3--topic~2--topic~1--topic
       /                  /
      Z--*--*--*--*--*--MB--*--*--*--upstream

   and you do want to include commits older than topic~3 because
   they have not been picked up by the upstream.  In such a
   scenario, specifying commit Z as the "limit" may make sense.
   It is not "limit", but is what ASCII drawing in git-cherry
   calls "fork-point".  Is that what you are doing (the commit
   log suggests otherwise and you want to get less than what
   merge base gives you)?